Zika Palmer

Zika Palmer, 29, the Director of the ZAP Fitness Foundation in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, ran her own personal best marathon at Twin Cities on October 2, finishing second behind Nicole Aish in 2:41:06 in the race that serves as the USA Marathon Championships. Palmer's previous marathon best was a 2:42:42 in Chicago in 2003. She was 41st at the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials in 2:46:21. On September 5, Palmer was 14th at the USA 20K in 1:15:16. ZAP, which she co-founded with her late husband Andy Palmer, includes an elite training center and mountain retreat and a roster of resident athletes whose competitive range reaches from middle distance to the marathon. Zika Palmer is a graduate of Emory University, where she competed in track and cross country, and has an M.S. in exercise science from Appalachian State. Check out the www.zapfitness.com website.

Runner's World Daily: It's pretty clear that the ZAP program you've created, for which you helped attract the coach and select the venues, has benefited your own running. You're one of your own best advertisements, in a way.Zika Palmer: Yeah. It's worked out really well, especially since we have two girls, Debbie Thornhill and Amanda Chase, in the program who've been here a little over a year. It's helped me a lot, this past year, to have people to run with day to day. In the past, there would be six or seven guys going for a run (laughs). I'd run with them for about 400 meters and that was it. Now it's nice to have people to run with. We can't run together every day because they're focusing on track or cross country, different stuff, but at least a couple of times a week, on our easy days, we can run together.

RWD: What was your own running situation like before you set up ZAP with your late husband?ZP: We came here in 2000. I finished college in '98 and was not a very good distance runner. I ran for Emory and did okay there, but never anything outstanding, and I didn't know much about the sport. So when I met Andy, he was the first person who said "well, if you really work at this, you could at least qualify for the Olympic Trials." I got that in my head and we sat down with a plan, in 1999, looking at 2004. It wasn't going to happen overnight. We were starting the (ZAP) program and I was in grad school and there was so much going on. I just looked at the first three years as training so that I could start (more serious) training later. So I didn't really race much or do much until ZAP started in 2002. I ran my first marathon, in 2002 and started seeing improvement and had the group to help me stay focused. Without being in school, I could focus more on training and the program.

RWD: What was that first marathon you did in 2002?ZP: I ran the Motorola (Austin) Marathon as kind of the first practice marathon, and I did that in 3:02. Then I ran Grandma's that June in 2:53.

RWD: Before you settled in North Carolina, you were at Emory at Atlanta. Did your husband Andy have longtime roots in Atlanta?ZP: He'd been there since '95 or '96. He kind of moved around a lot. He was up in New England for a long time and then he went to get his Ph.D. down at Florida State. When he finished that, he moved to Atlanta.

RWD: As you were looking for a place to settle and inaugurate ZAP, how much did either one of you know about the Blowing Rock area?ZP: Actually, we didn't know much. We knew we wanted to start a program like this. We were looking all over. We went out west and looked around New Mexico and Arizona and were considering checking out Colorado. We didn't really have our heart set on anyplace in particular. Finally someone said, "oh, you should stop in Boone, North Carolina, they've got great running there, through the mountains." We just stopped on our way back from being up in Maine in the summer and went for a run one day and thought "oh, this is awesome. We're moving here." We really liked it because the running was great. There's a park, Moses Cone Park, that has 26 miles of carriage trails to run on. It's in the mountains, so it's not super hot in the summer. It's a small town. A lot of people say "ah, it's in the middle of nowhere," but we're an hour and a half from Charlotte. We have kind of that small-town atmosphere where we can be kind of the "big fish." There's no big competing group. The athletes can focus on what they're doing. They can go out and do stuff in town, but there aren't a ton of distractions. When they come here, they're here to train. It's not to be going to clubs and partying.

RWD: Do you actually own the land where the ZAP program is headquartered?ZP: Yeah.

RWD: Did Andy need to get corporate backing for that?ZP: No. We went into that together. As far as keeping the program, we had enough support from people that he knew just in the running community, people he coached and worked with with doing sports psychology. They were excited about what we were doing and we felt like we could get enough support from them to keep it growing.

RWD: Brooks is now helping the Hansons and there are other shoe companies aligned with teams. Do you have any major backing like that at this point?ZP: Not at this time. We're actually working on that currently, so I shouldn't say too much. We're in negotiations with someone, trying to get something for the program. And we'll know--at some point--how that's going. But for the most part, we rely on private donations, people in the running community sending donations. Since we're a non-profit foundation, it's tax deductible. So about 60 percent of our support is donations and the rest comes from programs we put on like our adult running camps in the summer. And we host a lot of high school and college cross country teams for their preseason training camps. And triathlon coaches will bring 20 of their athletes here; we have one coach who'll come three or four times a year and put on a triathlon camp.

RWD: Ian Connor (a ZAP athlete who attended Ohio State) mentioned that Robert Gary has brought the Ohio State team down there.ZP: Yes. They came last year, and we just had the Duke women's cross country team. They usually come for the summer preseason and then their fall break. And we have the University of Texas coming on Thursday (last Thursday). We have a lodge that can hold up to 24 people, and then we have a dining room, and we can do whatever meals they want, we also have a weight room for them to use.

RWD: It does sound like ZAP can be a good segue out of the college system.ZP: Yes. It's the kind of lifestyle that's a good transition out of college. But we also realize that when athletes get close to 30,they're probably ready to be on their own. We have some athletes who will move into town and still train with us, but they get to the point where they can sort of support themselves a little bit more. We like having anywhere from nine to 12 athletes to be able to truly help them financially. And in terms of coaching as well, we don't really want to go much more than that because one of the biggest benefits of our program is that Pete (Rea), the coach, can focus on every athlete as an individual. Everyone has their own program. I just know that if it gets too big, you lose some of that personalized attention.

RWD: Since you have a small group, it is almost essential that any newcomer be someone with pretty established credentials, or is there ever an instance where there's a "diamond in the rough" that you think you might want to take on?ZP: We have the time standards for athletes to get in. We try to stick to those, but there are times when you're like "huh, this person could be really good, even though their times don't show it yet." We try to convince them to keep training. Like Amanda Chase. When she first contacted me in 2004, she hadn't met our standards and she said "oh, I hope some day I'll be able to come." I saw how she had improved. Her 1500-meter time had improved by over 20 seconds in one season, and I said "YOU should apply, because I know you will run our time this spring. So go ahead and apply now." So there are some cases where you see that.

RWD: Back to your own running; would you pretty much consider yourself to be a marathon specialist at this point?ZP: Yeah, it's definitely a strength for me. My 5k and 10k PRs are not outstanding. But I also think part of that is that I haven't really taken the time to focus on that. I will say yeah, the marathon is my event. But this spring I'm going to try and run a track season for the first time in eight or nine or ten years. I realize every time I get ready for a marathon, "yeah, I'm in really good shape, I think I could run a 34:00 10k right now." And that's not outstanding when you're looking at people running 31:00 10ks, but for me, I think it could really help me to work on some of the shorter distances and work on my speed.

RWD: Looking at the interim splits at Twin Cities, it looked like Nicole Aish was way up front for awhile (leading by about five minutes at one point) and there was a group further back with Susan Loken, Nicole Hunt, and Johanna Olson. It looked like you were pretty much solidly second on your own for much of the race.ZP: Yeah, after about ten miles, ten or 11, I was second place and just trying to find guys to run with and didn't know what was going on. I kept waiting for everyone behind me to come catch me. I was in second place going "what is going on?"

RWD: Did you think, in that field, you'd be able to finish as high as second?ZP: I didn't. Looking at the times coming in, I thought anything was possible. Looking at the field, there were definitely good winners, but nobody who was like "oh, they'll definitely win." I know Nicole (Aish) was a very good runner, but she was in her first marathon. So looking at the field, I thought "okay, if everybody runs well, I'll probably be fifth." But at the same time, in the back of my head was "you could win this, if things go weird." But the only thing was that while I was racing, I was never running to win. I was kind of in shock that I was in second and praying that I didn't fall apart. People were telling me where Nicole was the whole way. At one point, she was five minutes ahead, and then it was two and a half minutes and at 24 miles, they were going crazy because she was a minute and a half ahead. I could see her, but it wasn't until 24 miles that I was thinking "wait, I could win." But I think if I had gone into the race thinking "you could win this," maybe at 20, I would have decided "okay, let's try and win."

RWD: You're obviously still recovering from Twin Cities, but have you thought about what your next races will be?ZP: I haven't really sat down and talked it over. I don't know what I'm going to do this fall. But I think I'm actually going to be going to Kenya for five or six weeks in January. My plan before Twin Cities was to do that and then come back and run the Motorola Marathon, which is now the Freescale Marathon (in Austin) in mid-February. Unless my coach tells me differently, that's kind of the plan. The opportunity came. We were talking about sending one of our athletes to Kenya. And I was like "you know, I never have JUST trained." I've always had something else going on. If I can just give myself six weeks to do that, who knows what could happen? It's just one of those opportunities; if you could go, why wouldn't you go? I'd go to Lornah Kiplagat's training camp. So I think we can work it out with the business. Usually, our athletes go to Florida for about four or five weeks to train at that time anyway, and I usually stay here. So I think it could work out.